Natasha Lomas
Writer
The Latest from Natasha Lomas
Klang gets $8.95M for an MMO sim sitting atop Improbable’s dev platform
Berlin-based games studio Klang, which is building a massive multiplayer online simulation called Seed utilizing Improbable’s virtual world builder platform, has just bagged $8.95M in Series A f
Kodak-branded KashMiner Bitcoin mining rig for rent wasn’t — and won’t be
Write off another piece of crypto craziness: A Kodak-branded Bitcoin-mining rig that was on show at CES in January, where it generated much headshaking and skepticism that it could ever deliver the cl
Undo gets $14M to scale to meet the software accountability challenge
Undo, a long time player in the debugging tools space, offering its program execution capture and replay technology to help others diagnose software failures, has closed a $14 million Series B round
WeWork takes meat off the menu as part of environmental policy drive
WeWork, the co-working startup that’s valued at ~$20 billion and has some 200,000 members across 200 locations globally plus nearly 6,000 staff of its own, will no long allow employees to expen
Reminder: Other people’s lives are not fodder for your feeds
#PlaneBae You should cringe when you read that hashtag. Because it’s a reminder that people are being socially engineered by technology platforms to objectify and spy on each other for voyeurist
Brexit means blockchains, lots and lots of blockchains
Does Brexit mean blockchain? The UK government has published a whitepaper — some two years in the baking — where it sets out its fuzzy thinking in an attempt to move beyond two years of B
Sight Diagnostics starts selling an AI-based diagnostics device for faster blood tests
Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli medical devices startup that’s using computer vision and machine learning technology to speed up blood testing, is launching a point-of-care blood diagnostics syst
Goodwall gets $10.8M to expand its ‘LinkedIn for students’
Goodwall, a US-focused student and graduate professional network which aims to connect young people with college and employment opportunities, has closed a $10.8 million Series A funding raise. The ro
Hold for the drop: Twitter to purge locked accounts from follower metrics
Twitter is making a major change aimed at cleaning up the spammy legacy of its platform. This week it will globally purge accounts it has previously locked (i.e. after suspecting them of being spammy)
Facebook under fresh political pressure as UK watchdog calls for “ethical pause” of ad ops
The UK’s privacy watchdog revealed yesterday that it intends to fine Facebook the maximum possible (£500k) under the country’s 1998 data protection regime for breaches related to the Cam
The Nudge is a planner app packaged as an SMS subscription service
How do you fix digital information overload and the resulting life-attention deficit that’s apparently afflicting smartphone owners everywhere — and even leading some very large tech gian
Some iOS users report that 11.4 update triggers excessive battery drain
iOS users have been reporting problems with excessive battery drain after updating to iOS 11.4. On Sunday, 9to5Mac reported on a raft of posts on Apple forums complaining about excessive battery drai
Musk’s mini sub “not practical” for Thai cave boys rescue
Billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted at the weekend to say he was working with cave experts to build a mini submarine out of rocket parts that he thought could help a rescue effort to free 12
Facebook buys ads in Indian newspapers to warn about WhatsApp fakes
As Twitter finally gets serious about purging fake accounts, and YouTube says it will try to firefight conspiracy theories and fake news flaming across its platform with $25M to fund bona fide journal
Timehop discloses July 4 data breach affecting 21 million
Timehop has disclosed a security breach that has compromised the personal data (names and emails) of 21 million users (essentially its entire user base). Around a fifth of the affected users —
RIP “crypto”
RIP “crypto”. You had a good run. This week veteran cryptographer Matt Blaze, finally gave in — to what must have been a near-constant, low-level drone of ‘CAn Buy Crypto.com??
Samsung forecasts slowing profit growth for Q2, missing analyst estimates
Samsung has put out earnings guidance for its Q2 which indicate quarterly growth at its slowest for more than a year — as a lack of new ideas to sell high end smartphones drags on the company&
EU parliament calls for Privacy Shield to be pulled until US complies
The European Parliament has been making its presence felt today. As well as reopening democratic debate around a controversial digital copyright reform proposal by voting against it being fast-tracked
MEPs vote to reopen copyright debate over ‘censorship’ controversy
A 318-278 majority of MEPs in the European Parliament has just voted to reopen debate around a controversial digital copyright reform proposal — meaning it will now face further debate and scrut
Fever gets $20M to delight more hipsters with A/B tested Madhatter’s G&T parties
London-based Fever, an urban events discovery app-cum-entertainment events business with an online media arm that it uses as marketing megaphone and data-gathering lens on its community of users, has